


On My Own

by hauntedlittledoll



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Melt Down, property damage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedlittledoll/pseuds/hauntedlittledoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian’s always a little too tightly wound.  This time … this time, he’s either going to break or unravel completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On My Own

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epigraph taken from the song "On My Own" by _Ashes Remain ___.

_"Everyday—by myself—I’m breaking down."_

Damian’s belongings are few and sacred.

He destroys them all without hesitation.

It starts with the antique lamp on his dresser.  The base offends Damian as he carefully lays his gauntlets atop the otherwise empty surface.  He pitches the lamp across the room, and smashes his fist into the mirror.  Damian stomps through the broken glass in his combat boots, grinding the shards into an expensive rug with satisfaction.

He rips the pages out of the book on his nightstand, because the ending is meaningless and Damian won’t finish the stupid book on his own.  He throws the broken cover out the open window and slams the sash down hard enough to fracture both the glass and the frame.

He overturns his easel, kicking a hole through one canvas and breaking his favorite brush in half.  An improperly sealed tube of paint squirts _Cadmium Yellow Medium_ across the floor, and Damian tracks it further as he pulls the drapes down, yanks the covers from his bed, and rips open both pillows with a batarang from his belt.  He buries the weapon in the headboard, and Damian gets up again to kick over the potted plant.

The movie poster on his wall mocks him.  It was a highly inaccurate film with little-to-no recognizable ‘kung-fu.’  Damian very nearly rips the offensive thing off his wall, but can’t bring himself to destroy the keepsake.  Not now.

He rips off his mask instead.  The glue takes some skin with it; a drop of blood rolls down his cheek.  Damian brushes it away thoughtlessly with the back of his hand and flings the latex in the general direction of the waste-basket.

Next, he pulls all of his perfectly pressed slacks and immaculate oxfords from the wardrobe, and circles back to the dresser.  He yanks out the drawers, overturning them and kicking the neat stacks of laundry into disarray, but there’s no satisfaction in abusing something as pliant as fabric.

Damian begins pulling books off the shelves.  He throws some of them.  He rips the pages out of others.  He snaps spines and smears the broken pages into the paint on the floor with his boot … and when even this crime is not enough, Damian looks for something worse.

Something that would hurt.

Damian almost absently catches up the violin, as he moved towards the fireplace.  The fire Pennyworth had built hours ago was dying coals now.  Damian tosses the violin atop them, a pair of socks and a handful of ruined paper for good measure as he stirs up the coals.  Once the flame roars to life, and his instrument is beyond recovery, Damian uses the poker in his hand to sweep everything from the mantle.

One of his prized blades is separated from it’s display by the abuse, and Damian picks it up instead.  He is swinging blindly at the brickwork before he even realizes what he’s doing.  The jarring resistance echoes up his arms—weary from patrol, still tingling from the strikes to key pressure points, and trembling with exertion or emotion or both.

Damian just hits harder.

He doesn’t stop until his bedroom door flies open across the room and hits the wall with a bang.  “What the hell is going on …” Brown stops there, silhouetted by the light from the hall as she takes in Damian and the state of the room.

Damian catches sight of his own reflection in the broken mirror a few feet away, and he hates what he sees there; he drops the sword.

"Damian," Brown repeats insistently, braced over the threshold.  "What are you doing?"

"Go away."

His voice is small and ragged.  Pushing out even those few words makes his throat burn, and Damian doesn’t remember screaming himself hoarse, but he might be tempted to give an encore performance if the stupid girl pushes him.

Pushing is what Stephanie Brown does best.

"No."

Damian scoops up a paperweight from the floor and hurls it in her general direction.  It puts a hole in the drywall behind her, but the blonde isn’t remotely deterred.  “Leave, Brown!”  He turns over the empty bookshelf for added emphasis, but Brown is too stupid to take the hint.  “I said leave!”

She looks him dead in the eye: “Not happening.”

Damian took a step towards the broken window.  He didn’t even have a plan; it was just the one step, and Batgirl tackled him before he got any further.

He screeches.  It’s the only way to describe it; the noise wrenched from his ruined throat sounds like an angry cat.  He pushes, shoves, hits, kicks, and struggles, but Brown just wraps around him like a thrice-damned octopus.

"It was a trap," he shouts, elbowing hard.  "He was stupid and reckless!"

He has years of League training, and she made her first costume with athletic padding.  Brown has no hope of winning this fight.  She may have superior size advantage, but she can’t pin him and she clearly doesn’t want to hurt him.

Damian can’t say the same.

"It wasn’t my fault!"

"No one is saying that, Robin," she hisses through her teeth as he sent them both crashing into the bedpost in attempt to dislodge her grip.  Brown seems to have settled for merely hanging on, and it’s worse than if she thrashed him soundly.  "No one blames you!"

"Drake does!"

"Then he’s being stupid," she insists, foiling his efforts to escape by rolling with him.  "And not thinking straight.  And you should know better than to listen to him.  It’s no one’s fault.  Tim’s just messed up because he had to resuscitate Dick, and he spits fire and acid to hide the hurt.  You two are so _alike_ that way.”

"We have _nothing_ in common.”

"Bullshit," Brown spits.  "He’s 5’10" and unconscious and he hates those pointy ears even though _they kept his brain where it belongs_ … and he’s still alive because you and Tim _can_ work together … when it’s necessary … when it counts …”

"He’s not waking _up_ ,” Damian shouts over her, the end devolving into a shriek only because he landed on an unfortunately pointy bit of debris—certainly not because of how much it hurt to say the words.

"No, he’s not," Brown agrees, breathless and quiet against his back.  "And no one’s going to be okay until he does, but Tim doesn’t get to take it out on you.  That’s not okay.  It’s not your fault."

"I don’t care," he announces fiercely.

She doesn’t dignify the lie with a response, and they tussle in silence for a little while longer.  It’s a one-sided fight; Damian just can’t figure out how he’s losing.

It’s not _fair_.

When he finally gives up, Damian curls into the fetal position as he tries to curb his ragged breath.  Brown is wise enough not to let go.  She just curls around Damian instead to better her leech impression.

Her stupid hair still smells like smoke from the explosion.  Damian can still smell the fire on himself although he can’t tell if it was from working the scene or his stunt with the fireplace.

Not that it matters.  He still smells like ruin.

This situation is positively ridiculous—completely avoidable—but he allows Brown to cling.  He doesn’t cling back.  This mockery of a family isn’t his fault.  Damian is only ten, and he’s had a bad day.

The entire family had worked with the relief teams and rescue squads for hours after a full night of patrol.  Neither Damian nor Brown has slept in more than twenty-four hours.  They’re still in uniform.  They’re both bruised and tired and unnecessarily emotional.

Damian blames the exhaustion when he starts to cry.

He is so careful not to make a sound, but she’s close enough to feel the hitch of his breath even through the layers of their uniforms.  One hand begins to tentatively run up and down the length of his forearm.  The other stays locked firmly around his mid-section.

She doesn’t say anything though; there’s nothing left to be said.

They just lay amongst the wreckage the way Grayson had lain amongst the rubble.

Brown lets him cry until he has no tears left, and even then, Damian’s still lying complacently on the floor in her koala-like grip with his cheek mashed into the rug.

She is humming now with one hand still devoted to holding him in place as the other strokes his hair.  Damian doesn’t ask her what she’s humming, because he suspects that it is a lullaby or something equally inane and he doesn’t have the energy to properly protest such a degrading sentiment.

He takes a deep breath and feels her tense.  Damian lets it out slowly, and Brown presses a very soft kiss against the top of his head as she lets him up at last.

"Come on, kiddo," she murmurs, offering him a hand.  "Let’s get you cleaned up."

The bathroom is strangely pristine with everything still in it’s place, utterly untouched by Damian’s fit.  He hesitates, but Brown wordlessly gives him a boost onto the countertop next to the pajamas that Pennyworth had laid out before everything went to hell.

She goes to work on his face, removing any trace of blood or tears before setting to work on the more persistent spots of adhesive.  Damian keeps his focus on his stubbornly knotted boot laces, and eventually works the heavy footwear off.

He’s surprised when Brown insists on drawing a bath for him.  Damian normally showers after patrol, but the blonde remains firm.  There are rules in place about wet surfaces, exhaustion, and the shakes.

Robin isn’t shaky.  Robin is never shaky.

But since he doesn’t have the energy left to argue further, Damian lets Brown have her way, and doesn’t complain when he can still hear her moving restlessly outside the door as he strips and sinks into the water.

Brown better not be cleaning up the mess.  Even if everything is broken now, it is still _his_.

The movements quiet eventually, but Damian knows better than to think that the older hero left.  He stays in the water as long as he dares.  When he judges the risk of falling asleep in the bath to be greater than the risk of lecture, Damian sits up, scrubs down, and towels off quickly.

He dawdles in getting dressed and brushes his teeth twice.  When the tub is finally empty and Damian has no further excuse for delay, he opens the door quietly.

Brown had retired to the bed after banking the fire.  It’s the safest spot to sit after all, and Brown is courteously taking up as little room as possible by sitting folded in on herself at the edge.

He’s caught her in the act of cradling her head in both hands, but when she feels the weight of his gaze, Brown looks up quickly with her smile already in place.

"Wait a sec, D," she murmurs as she stands to approach.  "There’s glass on the floor."  Her habit of stating the obvious is grating, but there is a great deal of glass from both the mirror and the window on the floor—some of which crunches under her boots as she draws near.

And since Damian is barefoot, he obeys her sensible suggestion and doesn’t fight her obvious intention.

He doesn’t relax into her grip though; they are co-workers and a certain professional decorum must be maintained.

Only Brown doesn’t set him down again once they’re past the worst of it.  She doesn’t even release him once they’ve reached safety of the hallway.

Brown simply shifts his weight to a more comfortable hold, tugs the door knob free of the drywall and closes the panel on the wreckage behind them. 


End file.
